On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> Now, the media's portrayal of Iraq has changed, in accordance with the
>> change in US strategy on the Middle East, and the main problem in Iraq is
>> made out to be not Sunni guerrillas and terrorists but Shi'i militias.
>
> So was this battle just an invention of the capitalist hyena press, or
> does it not really matter much?
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin>
> Radical Militia and Iraqi Army in Fierce Battle
>
> By DAMIEN CAVE and EDWARD WONG
> Published: August 29, 2006
> BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 28 -- At least 20 gunmen and 8 civilians were killed
> Monday when the Iraqi Army battled fiercely for hours with members of a
> militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, in Diwaniya,
> Iraqi officials said.
>
> The violence, which one Iraqi general said included militiamen executing
> Iraqi soldiers in a public square, amounted to the most brazen clashes in
> recent memory between Iraqi government forces and Mr. Sadr's militia.
>
> [...]
Just for the record (and it certainly doesn't diminish your point) Juan Cole has explicated the Diwaniyah fighting as not so much Iraqi army vs. Mahdi army, the Badr militia of SCIRI (thinly disguised in Iraqi army uniforms) vs. the Mahdi army militia of Moktada al-Sadr. In short, as a battle between two Shiite militias.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/over-100-killed-in-iraq-100-wounded.html
<snip>
Diwaniyah is run politically by the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, and likely its police and security forces have
been heavily infiltrated by the Iran-trained Badr Corps, the
paramilitary of SCIRI (as the NYT also suggests.) So a lot of the
struggle is probably actually best thought of as Mahdi Army on Badr
Corps faction fighting.
<snip>
[Much more detail at original link esp. on the step by step escalation that led to this breakout]
and
http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/americans-bombed-diwaniyah-26-bodies.html
<snip>
In my appearance on the Lehrer News Hour on Tuesday, I challenged the narrative that the brave new Iraqi army single-handedly took on a Shiite militia and put it in its place. I think the army sided with one militia (the Badr Corps a.k.a Diwaniyah police) over another (the Mahdi Army). And I see the faction-fighting in Diwaniyah, which follows similar such clashes in Karbala and Basra, as further sign that even the Shiite south has entered a new phase of profound instability. Instead of celebrating that the Iraqi army did not run away from this fight, we should be worried that such a fight was necessary in sleepy, Shiite Diwaniyah to begin with. Diwaniyah, with a provincial government run by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, should have been a constituency for the Maliki government, not a challenge to it.
<snip>
[Lots more detail at this link as well, esp. about the military aspects and how it took the Badr Brigades + 500 lbs delivered by the US to fight the Mahdi army to a negotiated truce -- not at all the strong showing originally advertised.]
Michael